Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday December 03, 2012 @01:39PM
from the take-a-look dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a photo walk through of how Raspberry Pi boards are made at a Sony factory in South Wales, UK. The factory says that the multiple automated and manual checks have meant that only two of the 150,000 boards made there have been shipped with defects."

If it's only one of five, it would be extremely interesting for RPi team they are actively working on solutions for usb problems (there were several found and some corrected already). Could you help them and write your experiences in this thread [raspberrypi.org]?

While I can understand why they went with a cheap, standard, connector(rather than yet-another-goddam-slightly-different-barrel-plug), I suspect that the rPI support guys are cursing the day that they chose a USB socket as a DC-in jack.

To put it politely, the quality of USB chargers and powered hub wall warts is excitingly variable. If you are trying to run an ARM SoC, a USB ethernet controller, and possibly a couple of other downstream devices, all with just a +5 rail of potentially erratic specs, that isn't good for reliability. By going with the USB socket, they opened the field to every last dollar-store iCharger knockoff and its creative interpretation of what +5vDC looks like...

Yes. I think key in my good experience with RPi is that for all of them, I'm using the same type of uUSB PSU. It is actually a rather cheap OEM part, but it works reliably and I think many of the experienced problems with RPi stem from bad PSUs.

Really to test properly a multimeter alone is not enough, you need a known test load.

In other words hack together a board with a micro USB socket and a 5 ohm 7-10W resistor (technically 5W would be enough but I like to leave some margin). Then plug your PSU into it and measure the voltage. If you have a scope you can also measure to see if there is any significant ripple.

The problem is quite real but you're mad to think that this is exclusively an issue of the USB connector. Barrel plugs come in about 6 different standard sizes with no standard voltage for a certain plug.

By going with a common DC jack you not only open yourself to the same shoddy Chinese powersupplies as the USB chargers (my favourite of which was a 5V 2A charger without a heatsink which nearly melted supplying only 600mA) but you also open yourself to the risk of people plugging the wrong voltage charger i

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think that the USB connector is definitely the best of the (mostly bad) options. The bottom of the market in wall warts is fairly dreadful no matter what shape the connector is, and even people without access to a geek's-giant-bin-of-parts at least probably have a few of this flavor.

The one really unfortunate side effect(although probably unavoidable at this price point) of going with USB is that it means +5v input(maybe a hair higher, quite often lower if the supply is drooping) f

Actually when you think about it they didn't get this quite as wrong as you think.

The vast majority of USB wall warts on the market are designed to deliver a far higher load than any USB socket. It's the whole quick charging issue. The USB2.0 spec does not allow drawing 1A from the socket, a usb wallwart does, and this combined with some load sensing circuitry is precisely why phones charge much faster when plugged into the wall. The most common USB wallwart variety is in excess of 800mA, and very few peopl

To put it politely, the quality of USB chargers and powered hub wall warts is excitingly variable. If you are trying to run an ARM SoC, a USB ethernet controller, and possibly a couple of other downstream devices, all with just a +5 rail of potentially erratic specs, that isn't good for reliability. By going with the USB socket, they opened the field to every last dollar-store iCharger knockoff and its creative interpretation of what +5vDC looks like...

In one of the images (#11) in the article you can see screenshot of the "Automatic Inspection" software. It says that the defect rate is over 1%, i.e. for 150,000 units it should have been more than 1,500 defective units. Of course, they did mention that it was "shipped" units they were bragging about.

One of the two boards I ordered was DOA. The little red light would come on but nothing else... no boot, etc.The other board worked fine with the same memory card, cables, power supply, etc. so it had to be the board.Nice to know that I had the only 1 in 150,000... maybe I should try the lottery.

I just hopped onto the Raspberry Pi bandwagon. I received two boards over the weekend (made in China) and both can't keep the USB/Ethernet on... I'm the last post in the parent's link....
It's very frustrating (even for an experience electrical and computer engineer) and I hope that they can get their quality control under... control. I'd hate to see something as awesome as the Raspberry Pi ruined during it's early life because of poor hardware manufacturing.
Without RTFA, I expect this recent post is to

Get a DC Volt-meter.While RPi is running and accesing USB devices measure between TP1 & TP2 points on the board.If the voltage is near or below 4.75V or near or above 5.25V the fault resides in your power supply.The ideal powersupply should be a clean 5.1V one 1A or more - as you have some voltage drops over the polyfuses.I have two "original" 256Mb RPis Made In China and all the common USB issues i had were fixed with better power supplies (old 5V,2A PSP power brick & 5V,3A DC 7~24V to 5V step-down

Ordered two from RS early October, along with peripherals. Other parts arrived with back order notice saying they would ship 26th November. Still hadn't arrived today so phoned RS who said shipping date was now 22nd December (a Saturday?). I'm sure the Raspberry Pi folk are a very nice group of people but honestly they just come over as a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs when it comes to global fulfillment.

Because in my experience, the yield from the chinese Model B factory is 50%.

My first RPi is currently tied up in a work project, so I ordered another model B from Newark. It came in and I fired it up yesterday, no LEDs or any signs of life. Dead.

Then I noticed the main BGA in the center of the card looked a bit askew, looked closer and noticed the BCM2835 was missing. The Samsung DRAM that ordinary sits on top of the '2835 was soldered straight onto the PCB. I understand the part shooter fucking up once in a while and missing a chip, but the board shouldn't have made it out of the factory.

C'mon. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks for something that's most likely going to work, than do what I'm doing now and spending even more bucks mailing the fucking thing back, and crossing my fingers that the replacement works too...

That's because there is no foreigner on the ground in China checking quality. This is a common greenhorn mistake made by people who have no idea what they're doing sourcing from China, and who think it's too expensive to pay airfare, hotel, and salary for one of their staff to go over. You're going to get defective products, either because the factory is actively cheating you, doesn't understand your requirements, or just doesn't care. Chinese factories will do good work but they need supervision. If th

Sony is a big mess of a companies. It is a hydra moving in three directions. Most people are upset with Sony Music over the root kit thing. Or they are upset with Sony Computer Entertainment for removing linux from the PS3. Sony Corporation is the company likely making the Pis. Sony Mobile(formally Sony Erickson) makes Android phones. Each of these companies are headed by different people.

Who read this as saying, "...the factory says that the multiple automated and manual checks have meant that only two of the 150,000 boards made there have been shipped DUE TO defects" I mean, could explain the supply problem. Much more plausible that the entire world is being supplied by a half-dead 89 year old electronics engineer hand-building each one, occasionally losing his glasses between runs, with a crappy 1960's era Radio Shack soldering iron...

I don't see how the Raspberry Pi can compete with similar products like the MK808 or UG802. For $50 you can buy a cheap android on a stick PC loaded with built in features, and fully capable of customized the ROM. They have twice the computing power of the Pi, so why are people still interested in the Raspberry?

You can run Ubuntu, and perhaps other distributions. Besides, do you really need GPIO when USB will do? It just seems like a lot of hyper for nothing, when there are tons of similar boards already available from places like Alibaba. What can you do with the Raspberry Pi that can't be done with similar products?

I've seen some mods with the MK808 with a usb hub, ethernet port, hdmi male2female adapter all rolled into a case no bigger than the ones used for the Pi. It may cost a bit more, but you get 4x the performance. It all depends on what your looking for, but I guess the Pi might be fine for projects like - xmas lights.

Where is your non-profit company trying to kids interested in computers? Thats what the Pi foundation IS. All this selling to us geeks is just to build a community. The main purpose of the Pi is to educate.

If they were trying to build a community they would be a lot more open. For example, they would give us their Android sources, and they would have shared that the memory would be getting bigger as soon as they knew. A community is simply happening.

Review comparing the MK802 vs. Raspberry Pi - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKNPnBE-ouI [youtube.com] , and the MK802 has now been replaces with a much faster MK808. Conclusion - the MK802 is the clear winner when it comes to value, unless you have a specific project that requires the Raspberry Pi.

I'm sure the Pi will have its place in some projects. I just don't see why there is so much hype about it. The specs aren't that impressive, but seeing something like the MK808 that's 1/4 the size of the Pi with 4x the power, that's something to rave about IMO.

Me neither. If I knew then what I know now, I'd never have bought an R-Pi. Notably, that the R-Pi foundation would demo Android and then never release it. Bait and switch? Probably not really, but I wouldn't have bought an R-Pi except that they had an announcement about Android working.

What do you think the best way to change that behavior is?A) Refuse to buy any of their products, even the non-evil or outright good ones, orB) Reward them for building good products by buying them, while punishing them by boycotting their evil products

Path A causes them to just stop counting you as a potential customer. So they no longer care at all what you do. In a way, you're like a rabid PS3 fanboy who buys every one of their products - your purchasing dec

A) Refuse to buy any of their products, even the non-evil or outright good ones, or

Congratulations, you just failed to understand how corporations work. If I give Sony money for one thing, they can use it to develop products over which they intend to bend people and fuck them.

B) Reward them for building good products by buying them, while punishing them by boycotting their evil products

This is not about good products, this is about good behavior. We will reward them for their good behavior as soon as they start exhibiting it. If they don't want us to conflate the actions of Sony Music with Sony Computer Entertainment (both are gigantic douches, though... rootkits and lik-sang respectively, for exam

Note: Whenever I referred to "good" products in my original post, I was referring to "good" as in "opposite of evil", not "of high quality". I thought that was obvious given how I structured my comparisons, but I guess not.

You also seem to fail to understand how corporations work. I can flip your statement around and have it be just as true: if I give Sony money for one thing, they can use it to develop products to help people and perhaps redeem themselves.

The UK computer industry enjoyed a mini-rennaisance in 2012 thanks to the popularity of the $40 Raspberry Pi

Are they serious? Do they even know where the ARM SoC is designed?

It amazes me that the Arm Holdings stock was only around $20 a few months ago, when they are without question the most dominant, stable, and secure tech company in the world. Both Apple and Google are completely dependent on the licenses they have acquired from ARM to allow them to use their risc based ultra low power cpu in their devices, and to allow the manufacturers (samsung, ti, etc) to build those chips, and yet in some cases their stocks are twenty times more.

This amazes me, but at least ARM's stock has doubled in the past few months. There is NO bigger player in the computer industry in the world than the UK. I make this claim upon the the fact that now mobile is the dominant platform, and ARM is the only real player in that game (as of yet). Anyone can license and manufacture these chips for cheap and give us crappy hardware as a result, but the ingenuity is in their reduced and low complexity instruction set which allows for their ultra low power design, which is why almost everybody is using their SoC designs.

The only reason that nobody realizes this and their stock has been stagnant in the past is because they don't have a "ARM inside" sticker on every ARM based device made. It there was such a sticker, they would be beyond any doubt the most popular company in the world.

Disclaimer: I am Canadian (and live there at the moment), but I am also a UK citizen. I also don't hold any ARM stocks, though I am kicking myself that I still have yet to acquire any, since it would have almost doubled in value over the past year.

Wow. You are really stretching my words to make that speculation. In no way did I refer to RIM, but just because I am Canadian you assume that I am a die hard RIM supporter. I am talking about the UK, not Canada. I will not go off topic of my own post, but responses like yours make me slowly loose hope for the Slashdot community.

To reiterate, my comment was that if such stickers existed, then they would be the most popular company in the world, since their chips are used in everything, but unfortunately

they have some really slow SMT placement equipment..
The lines I program could knock that out in about half the time for SMT, and do most if not all connectors inline.
I see why they produce more in china than there..

Raspberry Pi IS a low volume prototype product in the world of SMT placement.

It takes cash to buy the parts and build them... They COULD build a years worth in a week... But that's a bad use of Capital investment to tie up money you don't have to. And it takes up floor space. The customer simply can't PAY for more at once. These guys sling parts to get paid... The parts and such are consigned to the end customer.

My original order was placed in July 5th, 2012 and I just got it on December 1, 2012 in the mail. I live in Georgia, US so I knew it would take a while to get "across the pond" but was a let down seeing it was made in china when they promised revision 2 boards were made in UK and they clearly are not.

I think you are misremembering.

Quote from the "made in the UK" post

"The upshot of all this? Element14/Premier Farnell have made the decision to move the bulk of their Raspberry Pi manufacture to South Wales."

Note that it is only one of the two manufacturing partners and for that partner it is only "the bulk of their raspberry pi manufacture" not all of it.

Assuming that's even true, the difference is that you are probably not employed as a web developer. It's safe to assume that whoever created the photo album viewer GP mentioned is employed as a web developer, and is obviously not very good at his/her job if he/she can't figure out how to pass content from the server with AJAX. Unless, as someone else mentioned, the point is to inflate page views.

and is obviously not very good at his/her job if he/she can't figure out how to pass content from the server with AJAX.

And if he were reaaally good at his job, he'd know that you don't need AJAX to swap pictures on screen. (Why did the GGP mention it anyway? I don't get it what it has to do with the task at hand anyway.)

By passing all the image URLs and titles to the client once. Javascript can modify the DOM to replace the images at will by modifying the image source or adding additional image elements. That doesn't take any XMLHttpRequest requests to the server, so its not AJAX.

and is obviously not very good at his/her job if he/she can't figure out how to pass content from the server with AJAX.

And if he were reaaally good at his job, he'd know that you don't need AJAX to swap pictures on screen. (Why did the GGP mention it anyway? I don't get it what it has to do with the task at hand anyway.)

At least you weren't trying to browse TFA on a tablet or phone...on my iPad, the first page and every other page after that was a warning that the page I wanted wasn't "mobile-optimized." If you can't code your page to be usable on all devices, you're doing it wrong.

(One minor point in their favor: at least they're not using that abortion known as Onswipe. Whoever decided scrolling should be replaced with pagination should be taken outside and shot.)

Am I the only person who misses having the internet viewable without JS? I mean, don't get me wrong, JavaScript can do great things but a lot of the time it really isn't necessary, and often doesn't fall back nicely when JS isn't available.

Sure, but what's your point? It's easy to do bad things with Javascript, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a very flexible and useful language, and the only scripting platform supported by pretty much every browser.

So even if they have defects, they still get shipped, despite the numerous automated and manual checks?

I'm not sure what you mean. No test can capture 100% of all possible faults especially if you include any of the faults that mean things work to begin with but then fail later on (e.g. a weak solder joint will work to begin with, but the increased current density will tend to exacerbate the weak point making it fail terminally).In any chip itself there will be hard to find points of failure (a metal contact problem causing the pipeline to not flow control properly for example). Or they could be a weak drive

So even if they have defects, they still get shipped, despite the numerous automated and manual checks?
What a way to keep people from being unemployed....

[wdw]

Of course you can get manufactured goods with 100% guarantee of functionality, just like in any industry - see the Space Shuttle software error rate per kLoC. But the point is that this will cost you a lot more. Beyond a certain point, performing extra checks and tests ceases to be economical and, frankly, even becomes a folly IMO. It's easier to offer free replacements with postal fees paid by the manufacturer at that point.

If you order one from the Newark Element 14 place, you can probably get one in about 3 weeks (maybe not right now with holidays coming up), since they're the ones using the UK manufacturing facility and can complete their orders much faster. I ordered a Model B on November 3rd and got it last week.

Appreciate the info..trouble is for many large organisations (like the one I work for), you have to go with their approved vendor list, which RS are on, and getting a new vendor approved is a non trivial task.

So... they have about 1,000,000 boards shipped now... What is magic about 1,500,000?BTW, I can generally get them in about 2-3 weeks from Newark/Element14 so I count that as "generally available" in the US.

Maybe they got pragmatic and decided the best way to bring in local jobs (Raspberry Pi = British,so jobs in the UK) was to find an existing plant that could take on the work. Maybe setting up their own factory from scratch was unrealistic for the Raspberry Pi organisation (these guys aren't an existing multinational megacorp, just a start-up, effectively) but they could at least try to get them manufactured in the UK and create some British/Welsh jobs. Perhaps they also felt this would allow them better qua